Art appreciation is complicated enough. Bring politics into it and… things get really confused and messy.

Could you look at art and appreciate it for the sake of itself? How would your perception change knowing the artist was someone famous, notorious even? How does your art appreciation fare knowing the artist was Hitler?

Of course, that brings up the question – Who is Hitler to you, personally? Were you born before his death? Is your family German, Austrian, Jewish or European at all? What real relevance is there about Hitler for you in a personal way? Is there anything real enough to change the way you look at the art he created at various times in his life?

I admit, other than reading history, Hitler has very little connection to my life. My family are Austrian but I hardly know anyone from that connection and I’ve never travelled to Europe at all, so far. I can remember my Grandmother (on my Father’s side) ranting about “never letting a German into her house”. This was a little shocking to me considering I thought of myself as German (on my Mother’s side of the family). I never forgot her saying that and the conviction she had, or how misled she seemed to me in that moment.

Hitler was an artist, as are/ were many other people who didn’t stand out in history. What matters in art? How much does it matter that the artist was a German politician and later a famous dictator? Is art about politics? Do you still believe in the connection between politics and religion too?

Some questions don’t have easy answers. However, I would not like to see Hitler’s original art defaced or destroyed. It’s part of our history, our culture and something one man left behind of the beauty he found in the world.

A batch of the Führer’s watercolours has just been sold at a controversial auction. But as well as having zero artistic value, most ‘Hitlers’ are probably fake – so why do we continue to collude in this grotesque deception?

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Some of the most popular images on the Internet are photographs of cats, dogs, and other pets. Any proud pet owner would love to show off pictures of their best friend, especially at holiday time.. But…

The Stall & Craft Collective is an online craft & gift marketplace, and events directory, which launched in June of this year. This October, they’ve reached over 30,000 unique visitors and 227,000 page views — and climbing. Part of their success lies in the fact that they have undertaken an extensive marketing campaign in UK craft magazines, securing over 25 full page advertisements that have reached a potential readership of over 650,000.

If you’re thinking, “This is just like Etsy,” well, it’s not quite the same. But I’ll let the founder of the collector, Helen Eskins, tell you more about it.

Hello & welcome, Helen! Tell us a bit about yourself, please.

My name is Helen Eskins and I’m a mother of two from Birmingham, West Midlands. My background is on the administrative side of Child Protection and criminal law. I have been self-employed for around 11 years now, after having started a company working from home transcribing court hearings and police interviews. My own little craft business is called Harriet-Rose Crafts.

I began to attend local craft fairs and met some wonderful people along the way. I soon began to get a bit disillusioned with all the local craft fairs I was attending due to the obvious lack of advertising and promoting being done by the organisers, resulting in very poor attendance by customers, so I decided to start up my own events organising company to help my fellow crafters, a lot of whom had become very close friends. This resulted in the formation of Moon & Light Markets some five or so years ago now. Moon & Light Markets have been incredibly successful and we organise events all across the West Midlands, Worcestershire, Warwickshire and Staffordshire areas, until recently holding fairs once a month. This in turn then led to the idea of Stall & Craft Collective.

What is the purpose of Stall & Craft Collective:

The idea of Stall & Craft Collective was formed whilst organising craft fairs through Moon & Light Markets. I began to think how much easier it would be for event organisers if there was a website they could go to where everything they needed to organise an event was there all under one roof so to speak. My husband, Mark Eskins, had just taken redundancy from work so it seemed an ideal opportunity for us to take on a new challenge together and turn this idea into a reality.

We want Stall & Craft Collective to provide event organisers with free advertising of their events, and in turn for potential customers to find their local events to attend. We also want event organisers and stallholders to be able to easily find and contact each other so that stalls can be filled. Stallholders are then able to list the events they are attending so customers can see where their favourite stallholders will be, and will also be able to look through the stallholders at an event they are going to, in case there is anything they can pre-order or have personalised etc.

Another wish I had was for our stallholders to be able to have a forum where they could sell their items at any given time to a nationwide audience, rather than just once a month at a craft fair. Having attended craft fairs myself as a stallholder and as an organiser, I was aware that a lot of stallholders find it difficult to make a living from their craft and I wanted to ensure that they had a selling platform without the high fees and commission taken from other high end shopping sites. We therefore decided on a small yearly fee with no commission or other charges to give an opportunity to every stallholder to join up.

We welcome all crafters, stallholders, and small business owners. There are categories to suit everybody including vintage, antiques, clothing, shabby chic, furniture, jewellery, home décor, cakes, wedding services, etc. and we welcome your suggestions for any different categories if you can’t find something suitable.

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Listen to Episode 111 of Slate’s The Gist: Subscribe in iTunes ∙ RSS feed ∙ Download ∙ Play in another tab Today on The Gist, we explore the uncanny valley of rogue taxidermy. Robert Marbury, author of Taxidermy Art, explains why an American BioArt trend is taking hold. Plus, Mike Tipping, of The Tipping Point…

“At first, artist Mica Angela Hendricks didn’t want her four-year-old daughter near her new sketchbook. She is serious about her art, and she knew little Myla would want to scribble all over the pages. Then, her daughter said the words that changed everything.

“If you can’t share, we’ll have to take it away.”“She had used her own mother’s words against her, and now Mica had no choice but to indulge Myla. She let her daughter finish one of her sketches, and pretty soon, they had a whole collection of collaborations.”

There’s no denying the appeal of needle felted animals. The combination of cute animals so-lifelike-it’s-amazing and the fun fit-in-your-hand size makes them absurdly adorable. Not to mention that you can finally afford to have wild animals like raccoons and bears — even rare unicorns — right inside your home!

But if you’ve been struggling with a way to, I don’t know, make your purchases seem more purposeful, if not practical, than a collection of fuzzy shelf-sitters, Sheep Creek Needlecraft has got a great idea for you: mobiles.

And if you don’t have a baby now, or even one on the way, don’t worry. Mobiles are for adults too. Remember the swanky mid century modern hanging art sculptures that once were de rigueur? Well, those were mobiles. Revive that hanging art trend for your home or office, say with an “air aquarium” of felted sea folk…

We highly recommend the Star Wars mobiles. Perfect for the sci-fi nerds and pop culture lovers in your life.

And what could be better for insomniacs than counting handmade felted sheep?

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Until August 31st, Art Everywhere US will display 58 beacons of American art on over 50,000 digital and material billboards across the country—on city streets, at town bus stops, across rural highways, on movie screens, bus shelters and taxi marquees.

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by Lise LaSalle Having enjoyed Tim Burton’s movies through the years, my curiosity went on high alert when I read about his new biopic Big Eyes set to be released this Christmas in a theater near you and me. Adam Parfrey who runs Feral House Books, a little house of darkness promoting ‘pure information and…

Best known for her series of Pin-Up Girls, but Charlene’s other gigs make you think of her as being the pinup model rather than the artist. Let the history entertain you — develop a huge girly crush, like Slip Of A Girl — but don’t underestimate this fine artist!

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This lithograph of Nude, Sleeping by Wolf Kahn was part of The Vincent Price Collection. No, it’s not like Vincent Price himself owned the nude — but is his selection of the art for a collection to sell at Sears any less creepy?

Yes, you read that right; Vincent Price, the famed B-film master of kitschy horror was selected to head a retail art sales program for Sears.

The proceeds from The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth Benefit Auction will benefit future acquisitions and programming for the Director’s Council FOCUS Exhibition Series. The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is dedicated to collecting, presenting, and interpreting international developments in post – World War II art in all media and creating a welcoming environment for its public appreciation. The Modern promotes understanding and interest in art and artists through curatorial research and publications, and a variety of educational programs, including lectures, guided tours, classes, and workshops.

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pricing. seriously, i think this is one of the most challenging parts of building your own little biz.

last week i recommended an ebook called earn what you deserve. this book does not give you a magic formula for figuring out your pricing. what it does do is tackle the underlying issues you need to consider before you can really charge what you are worth.

let me say that again. no pricing advice in the world is going to help you if you do not have a sense of the value of your work.

earn what you deserve is going to help you do that. with it, you consider what it means to be a biz owner, tackle your own beliefs about money and finances, figure out the true cost of doing business, look at new ways of marketing and selling, and start to build your own sense of value in your work and your product. once you have done that, then what?

well it is time to look at what you have been charging for your product. as promised i have compiled a list of tips, advice and strategies from all over the place that may help you with this. this is not a step-by-step formula for figuring out your price. (if i ever find the elusive, magic step-by-step formula for pricing i will share it immediately!) what i have done is a lot of research into different strategies and taken the bits and pieces that make sense to me and apply them to what i do. so i am sharing those bits and pieces with you here.